


Hear me now (like you never heard me then)

by evening_skies



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s06e04. Canon Divergence, Extended Scene, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 02:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19802617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evening_skies/pseuds/evening_skies
Summary: A rewrite of Raven and Clarke’s scene in 6x04. Wherein Clarke does not regret the choices she made, and Raven wonders if the Clarke Griffin she remembers really did die in Praimfaya.*“Raven, I am not a leader,” Clarke said, and Raven’s words lodged in her throat. “I barely remember how to be a friend. I am a mother before all else, and you—you are the people that put monsters in my child’s head and threw her into the middle of a war.”I accept that you may never forgive me. That’s okay. I don’t forgive you either.





	Hear me now (like you never heard me then)

“Let me guess. I’m the first stop on your apology tour?”

Clarke came to a stop at the bar. “Raven, listen to me. Please.” 

Outside, sounds of the celebration grew louder, and shadows flicked past the windows as people hurried through the town square. Raven stared at the amber liquid in her glass and tried to refrain from rolling her eyes. Another Clarke Griffin apology. Great. Just what she needed today.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke said. Raven didn’t have to look up to know her eyes were wide and pleading in that expression she’d seen so many times in the past. “For the gorge. For McCreary and his army. For Shaw.”

“ _Shut up,_ ” she said, slamming her fist down on the counter and surging out of her chair. “Keep him out of this.”

Clarke winced and flinched back slightly. It was odd, how yelling at Clarke felt both familiar and foreign. Two weeks ago, this was a woman she had mourned and missed for six years. At times, it felt like she was talking to a ghost.

“You turned us in,” Raven said, still rocked with disbelief over that truth. “Good people died because of you and don’t you _dare_ bring Shaw into this, Clarke. Shaw was tortured because of you.”

The apologetic, kicked-puppy look on Clarke’s face dropped like a stone. “Raven, at that point I didn’t even know who Shaw was! He was just the guy who stood there and watched me be beaten, interrogated and tortured.”

Raven stilled. “I didn’t know that y—”

“It’s not like what happened to me was any worse than what happened to you.” Clarke folded her arms and glanced down at her feet. “I’m not trying to guilt trip you Raven, I’m trying to make you understand. I _am_ sorry about what happened to Shaw, and that we couldn’t save him. He helped us, in the end, and he made you happy. I’m sorry my actions got you hurt and the part I played in causing the massacre that happened in the gorge. But leaving Bellamy behind? Turning you in? I don’t regret it. Maybe I should but I don’t.”

It was something Raven suspected, had even hoped to hear instead of the usual plaintive apologies, but for some reason it still hit her like a blow to the stomach. For years, Clarke’s absence was like a missing limb in their little group. The thought that Clarke didn’t love her and Bellamy—hell, even Murphy—like they loved her…

Questions rushed to leave her lips, but conflicting emotions climbed into her throat and held the words there.

“Raven, I am not a leader,” Clarke said, voice cracking. “I _barely_ remember how to be a friend. I am a mother before all else, and you—you are the people that put monsters in my child’s head and threw her into the middle of a war.”

Raven staggered. “We—that was necessary,” she said, mouth dry.

Clarke’s face shuttered. “She’s twelve, Raven. A child. My child. For half her life, the only human interaction she’s had is me. Now, she’s expected to be a leader of people decades older than her?” She stopped and shook her head. “You—I missed you all. So much. You have no idea. But you were back in my life for a week before you all decided it was okay to take my child from me."

Raven felt wrong-footed, like she’d stumbled into a minefield and she wasn’t sure how she got there.

“It was just so she could take power from Octavia,” she whispered.

“This isn’t a temporary thing, Raven,” Clarke snapped. “This is permanent. It’s brain-altering. Every night her dreams are filled with things no child should have to see. She wakes up _screaming_ about watching Becca burn to death, about _feeling_ the fire on her skin.” Clarke’s eyes were shining again. “Even if the flame is taken out of her, those memories are hers now.”

Raven felt like she might throw up. Madi was having night terrors? The thought that they’d put nightmares in that kid’s head made her skin crawl. Clarke had never said much about what it was like having the flame in her head. They assumed it was safe. It had led the grounders for a century. It _should_ have been safe.

Shit. Poor kid.

Raven shook herself. She couldn’t say she regretted her part in making Madi Heda, and leaving Bellamy to die in the fighting pits for giving Madi the flame was still inexcusable, despite how quickly he seemed to forgive Clarke. It wasn’t like they were trying to hurt Madi. They needed to do it to stop the war. Surely Clarke saw that?

Across the room, Clarke sighed and sat down on one of the bar stools, rubbing a hand across her face. “I’m not here to fight,” she said. “I’m not here because I need you to forgive me either. I just need us to get to a place where we have each other’s backs again, because we’re on a new planet filled with people we don’t know and all we have is each other. I promise I will never betray you again, as long as none of you again do something to hurt Madi.”

Raven was ready to concede until the last sentence, then indignation flared hot and sharp in her chest. She was unable to keep incredulity spilling into her words like acid. “As long as _we_ don’t hurt her? You put a shock collar on her, Clarke.”

“I shouldn’t—” Clarke stopped, closing her eyes as though in pain. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

She wanted to say, _damn right you shouldn’t have_ but stopped at Clarke’s expression. “Why did you?” she asked, trying not to let the judgement seep into her voice.

Clarke ran her fingers over the counter and kept her eyes trained on the wood. “It’s not exactly new, is it? When I’m backed into a corner, I hurt the people I love. If I think it will save them,” she added, forehead creased in a frown. "Madi had never seen that side of me. I hope she never sees it again.”

 _I hurt the people I love_. Raven had thrown those words at Clarke on more than one occasion, but something about hearing it from the blonde’s lips was unsettling. She remembered something Murphy said after the eclipse, about walking in on Clarke holding a blade to her throat.

Raven watched the movement of Clarke’s fingers on the counter and tried to discern what was going through the other woman’s head.

She couldn’t.

Six years stretched between them like a valley that Raven could never cross. Six years, all alone, with a child. Raven hadn’t really thought about it before. Hadn’t taken a moment to consider what that time might have shaped Clarke into.

Clarke glanced up and her lips twisted into a strained smile. “I think I’m gonna go now.”

She slid off the bar stool, adjusted her jacket and walked toward the door. With her fingers on the doorknob, she turned back and said, “Raven, I accept that you may never forgive me. That’s okay. I don’t forgive you either.”

Then she was gone.

Raven’s legs felt weak and shaky. She returned to her bar stool and slumped over the counter, air rushing from her lungs.

“Dammit Clarke,” she muttered, tipping the last of her drink down her throat.

Her eyes were burning. She wiped at them furiously as the din outside swelled. A group of locals spilled into the bar, laughing and talking.

The anger that had simmered beneath Raven’s skin all day was gone, leaving her hollow and cold. A brief thought flashed through her mind before she could restrain it: she could really use a hug from Harper right now. Raven couldn’t quite stop a sob from working its way into her throat. After finding out Monty and Harper were gone, Shaw was the only thing keeping the grief from swallowing her whole.

She missed them. She missed them. She missed them.

Without Shaw and without her anger filling her, her body was an open wound. All the pain and the loss threatened to come rushing in like the swell of the tide. That feeling—the heavy, hollow ache—she'd felt it before. Years ago, when she stood at the window with Bellamy, watching fire roll across the Earth, taking someone she loved with it.

_Think we can do this without her?_

She thought she had Clarke back.

Now, she wondered if she had anyone at all.

**Author's Note:**

> This is fairly terrible but I had a lot of thoughts and I had to share them, so there you go! Let me know if you agree that there's a lot of untapped potential this season.


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